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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375686">Gaëtan Gatian</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar'>oonaseckar</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avengers (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, X-Men - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Music, Awesome Howling Commandos, Erotomania, F/M, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Music, Musicians, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Skinny Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stucky - Freeform, Unrequited Love, Wicca, Witchcraft, de Clerambault's syndrome, music business, weedy Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 13:47:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,278</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve -- weedy, pre-serum Steve, pre-growth spurt Steve -- is bereaved and lost after his mother dies.  He takes a job as a cook in an old folks' home, gets a little psychologically cramped and dark and off on the wrong track.  Music is what gets him through.  He gets really obsessed with bands.</p><p>Really obsessed.</p><p>He gets obsessed with a band called the Howling Commandos.</p><p>The singer is one James 'Bucky' Barnes.  </p><p>Steve gets obsessed with him.</p><p>Feels like he's in love with him.</p><p>Starts to think that Bucky Barnes is in love with <i>him,</i>, too.</p><p>Even though they've never met...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Tony Stark &amp; Charles Xavier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. just another day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Chapter title is the first names of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, first identifier of de Clerambault's syndrome, otherwise known as erotomania.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaëtan_Gatian_de_Clérambault</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Steve, Mrs Carter wants two boiled eggs and brown bread for breakfast.  She said to tell <em>Captain America</em> to make sure he does them at least four minutes, she swears they were almost raw yesterday."  The carer standing at the kitchen door laughed pleasantly, and hurried on.  No time to linger.</p><p>"Yeah, yes, right," Steve said, rolling him eyes.  Thanks, Peggy, he murmured inside his mind.  Thanks a bunch!  She wasn't his favorite out of the residents: liked to try to get under his skin.  Steve was aware he wasn't the most ripped, masculine-looking creature on the planet.  His growth spurt had been a long time coming, and in the end never arrived at all.  Most of the staff called him  Steve, but not Peggy.  She knew that Steve liked comic books and superheroes, almost as much as he loved music.  And had decided to gift him a <em>superhero name.</em>  And even a superhero persona, embroidered and given more detail over time.  She'd done little <em>drawings</em> of his supposed spandex goddamn superhero outfit, for God's sake, and insisted on putting them on display in the communal living room.  (Pretty good ones, too.)</p><p>A raw cough welled up from his lungs, and he leaned out the kitchen door to avoid germing up the breakfast trays...  Hacking away, he felt like his throat was going to start bleeding.</p><p>"Time to give up the smokes, I think, Steve," advised the passing green-overalled laundry assistant, Milly.  "Before they give <em>you</em> up."</p><p>"You could be right,"  Steve replied, his eyes watering a bit.</p><p>"Course I'm right," Milly said, pausing and folding her arms, glad to stop and chat.  "Gave up six years ago myself, and I feel better every day.  What reason is there to keep smokin' em?  They make you ill, they cost a bundle, they're bad for your skin..."</p><p>"They're a fire risk," Steve offered.</p><p>"Um yes," Milly conceded stumblingly, and moved swiftly on.</p><p>Mix, chop, knead, grind!  Bake, boil, fry, stew!  So many things for a cook to do!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. i cook with wine.  sometimes I even add it to the food</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Cooking pays the bills, for Steve.  Music lights up the soul.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is W.C. Fields.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The residents were all right.  Tottering past on long treks to the john, luring him into one-sided conversations about the good old days, dozing in the breakroom. </p><p>And wobbling, leaning on walkers, to the dining room, without much interest in their meals.  The job was a means to an end, but he didn't mind it.  Most of the staff were good people, who cared about the residents.  And if he wasn't passionate about cooking, he took pride in his own efficiency, and providing a varied, nutritious diet for the people who relied on him.  He'd got the job because his dear old Ma had known one of the directors of the chain of homes.  Now Ma was gone, and without the job she'd got him, he didn't know what he'd have done. </p><p>Good job he'd already done basic food prep courses at a community college.  Before Ma was gone, he'd thought of pro cooking school.  But his money was earmarked for other things, now: the basic essentials of life. And beyond that, for his dreams.</p><p> It wasn't as if the job didn't take up every minute, more than full-time, working extra hours to fund his goals. With what his Ma had left, it was tough even to rent a tiny apartment, and the job brought in enough to feed himself and pay the bills provided he didn't develop any expensive tastes, like meat or high-speed internet. He couldn't do without his phone, because otherwise how was he going to listen to the Howling Commandos, now his laptop had died on him?</p><p>His phone package was expensive, though. Complex arithmetical problems worked themselves out in his head, as he tried to devise a way to afford to keep it and get himself a tablet too. But damn it, there was no way. Just no way. Unless he bought one second-hand? Just took the money out of his little savings stash? But that would mean losing interest, if he took some money out before the account regulations allowed.</p><p>That was money earmarked for art-school. And art-school, as a final destination, was almost as non-negotiable as getting to see Bucky Barnes, again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. would anyone love me if I couldn't cook?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Will cook for food.  Will stalk for love.  That's Steve.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Nora Ephron.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Well, damn it. Some things you don't have any choice about. Some things are essential.</p><p>He almost burnt the pudding for lunch, a close call.  Getting it out of the oven at top speed, he did manage to burn his fingers.  It wasn't that he was a <em>bad</em> cook: his mind was just elsewhere, half the time.  On art, and music, and how great it was going to be when...  well.  It wasn't that he was the greatest cook, either, would never claim to be.  But then, he couldn't have afforded cooking school without cutting into his funds for art-school. He'd done the bare minimum of food prep and production credits in community college and a local trade school, instead, enough to get employed by temp agencies.  Extra income, over and above the regular gig, going towards his dreams.</p><p>But after a marathon washing up binge and mopping the kitchen floor, he was free -- for now.  And out the door like a racing pigeon heading for home, heart light and swinging.  And singing himself, a Howling Commandos song <em>of course,</em> singing his heart out for the entertainment of passers-by.</p><p>Up on to his bike, jumping with more grace than usual given his strength level.  (His physique still puny, despite stubborn persistent gym hours put in at the Y.)  And aware of it, and aware it was because he felt good.  <em>And</em> aware he felt good, because he had the new song clip to go home to, and <em>that</em> he owed that to Howling Commandos.  But mostly, most of all to <em>him</em> -- to Bucky Barnes. Bucky the songwriter, the lead guitarist, graceful madman Bucky with the silver arm, the only one who could possibly understand. If only Steve could damn well <em>get</em> to him.</p><p>And so on home, biking through the broken concrete and the weeds, brown leaves under his wheels.  The dog walkers pulled their woolly poodle mutts out of his way, the air cold and dry but the sunlight strong.  The best kind of day.  His favorite kind of weather.  Like vodka, this kind of day, the kind his nursing-student buddy Nat sometimes poured down him till his throat burned.  It gave you a shock, refreshed, sharp, something to react <em>against</em>.  Strong, against the cold.</p><p>Pity it didn't seem to work that way in the gym.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. a design for living</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Steve's personal life may be a little bare and austere.  But the boy's got big plans.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Noel Coward.  I think.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You come down from exhilaration, and then everything's grey.  You don't even need drugs to do it, this he'd discovered in the course of his nineteen years.  Into the communal garden, all grayness up the stairs to the second floor tenement apartment in a quietly despairing eyesore of a neighborhood, all, all grey.  Bouncing his bike up the steps, not so gray.  Got to keep going, keep your spirits up, boy.  What can destroy you really?  Get stronger and stronger and stronger.  Some things are destined, Steve murmurs, to himself.  And if they're meant to be, then no power or agency on this earth can stop them coming to pass, no hydra of a thousand spitting heads.</p><p>Bucky was the man.  Steve knew it without a doubt.  So nothing could destroy him, and he only needed to keep on getting stronger and more ready every day, inpreparation.  Stronger inwardly, spiritually, he meant.  Looking into the dull spotty mirror in his apartment's tiny bathroom, it was impossible not to acknowledge that his outer envelope was not going to change much, bar plastic surgery.</p><p>There wasn't all that much wrong with it, though.  Lots of girls had told him he had a nice face.  And he didn't mean just his old Ma, although her too, it was true.  Not that a girl was what he was looking for.</p><p>He peered closer into the mirror.  Yeah, it was true that he had kind of a big nose.  Undeniable, that. Unarguable.  Steve Rogers had a big nose, and that was a mater of fact, not open to argument.  <em>Imposing</em>, though, he told himself.  His old Ma had always told him, you and Julius Caesar, Steve: both of you, a big, classical, <em>imposing</em> nose.  He didn't feel much like Caesar, looking at his nose.  Maybe it would look smaller by comparison, if he wasn't such a weed, so skinny.</p><p>He'd begun to try to put on a bit of muscle, lately, though, it was true.  Goddamn <em>ought</em> to be able to, the amount of time he spent in the gym.  He was beginning to get horrible muscle and joint aches from it, keeping him awake at nights.  Pain and discomfort, and no bulging muscles on the horizon whatsoever! </p><p>And short, into the bargain.  As if <em>skinny</em> weren't the outside of enough.  But then, it was getting a little late for a growth spurt, at nineteen.  He'd read up enough on it -- desperately, back when he was a kid.  One more year -- eighteen months, two years at the outside limit -- and that was it, this would be his final adult height.  Five foot five, stretching, on his tippy toes.  On a good day.</p><p>But overall, none of it was too bad.  So he told himself, anyhow.  Pretty good, really.  He could do a lot with it.  Could be a lot worse.  Anyway, since he was <em>destined</em> to be Bucky Barnes' husband -- inexorably, inarguably -- he knew Bucky would love it, all of it.  All of <em>Steve</em>.  Nose included.</p><p>He would love what was inside of Steve, too.</p><p>Staring vacantly out of the window for a moment, Steve realized that he hadn't checked his mail, and ran down the steps to the communal pigeonholes in the foyer.</p><p>One letter from his bank, just a clinically uninteresting depressing statement, two letters from online buddies with a real-letter fetish, one in France and one in Argentina.  The French guy, Jacques Dernier, wrote terrible incomprehensible English, but was always pleasantly upbeat and straightforward.  Pepper in Argentina, though, was beginning to make Steve feel a little uncomfortable.  Goths obsessed with tarot cards, Ouija boards and voodoo dolls were ten a penny, or used to be at least, five or ten years back when True Blood was still on the scifi channels.  But with Pepper it was beginning to seem less of a seedy affectation and more of a … a symptom.  Her letters seemed definitely... unbalanced, lately.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. a walkin' talkin' reason to live</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Bruce Springsteen.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Then in the evening, Natasha dragged him out for a beer.  Which he shouldn't have agreed to because <em>hello art-school funds,</em> but oh hell.</p><p>Although it did give him a chance to show her the artwork for the new <em>Howling Commandos</em> release, so they could analyse Bucky Barnes' outfit: to wit, tight turtleneck black sweater, wraparound dark wool skirt, eyeliner and Docs.  Steve had nearly had a conniption at first sight of it.  Bucky just looked <em>too</em> good.  It would only increase Steve's competition.</p><p>”Yeah,” Nat agreed, sucking on a beer bottle.  “<em>Almost</em> too good. I’m beginning to worry about that boy…”</p><p>“Well, all those sluts who follow him around encourage him," Steve said, breezily.  And only half meaning it.  "Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with a little cross-dressing.  <em>You’d</em> end up with twice the wardrobe ’cause you could borrow a guy's clothes, for a start.”</p><p>“Yeah, and what if they borrow <em>yours</em>? And bust ’em at the seams?” Nat asked.</p><p>“No man is perfect,” Steve shrugged. “Except Bucky, of course.”</p><p>“Oh God help us, here we go,” Nat sighed.  “Don’t start up, Steve, I don’t think my stomach can stand it.  Don’t you think it’s time you gave up on this dream-world you're living in, get yourself a real live actual man?”</p><p>"Bucky Barnes <em>is</em> a real live actual man,” Steve said in a soft quiet voice. “They don't come more <em>real</em>, more <em>live</em> or actual.”</p><p>Nat sighed, staring into space, then looked at him with a kind, but reproving face.  “He’s out of your reach, Steve,” she tried to explain, gently but with a final tone. “You’re just hurting yourself with this craziness. How long has it been going on, eighteen months? We’ve <em>all</em> had adolescent crushes in our time, sweetie, but this is too long. And you’re a grown man.”</p><p>“You’re entitled to your opinion,” Steve replied blankly.  He shut out any feeling over Nat's intrusion into his private world.  His own reference to it had been casual.  Nat usually accepted any such remarks that way, and just kidded along. She must have been concealing a loss of patience over the whole thing for a while.</p><p>Nat looked at Steve, whose blankness signaled that any words she chose to venture would only fall into a vacuum, a blank hole, never to reach their destination and be <em>truly</em> heard.  “Want another beer?” she enquired, resigned.</p><p>They watched tv together at Steve's place afterwards.  Nat had missed a lot of her favorite Brazilian telenovela recently, because she'd cancelled her subscriptions due to spendthrift brokeness, and not having visited for a while.  Steve spent most of it explaining plot developments to her at some length.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Clint, his room-mate, helpfully added surreal interjections, giving a head-spinning insight into the mind of a three-year-old and how adult drama must appear to little kids.  Or, alternatively, to a toked-out stoner swigging Boone's Farm.  Steve tolerated him, mostly because the help with the rent was sometimes the only thing keeping his college fund healthy . And because he suspected that Nat had a thing for him, and you just didn't cross Nat.</p><p>“He’s kissing that lady ’cause she’s hurt in an accident. Kiss it betterrrrr!” Clint drawled, slower than molasses.</p><p>“Bad man, Paul’s a bad man, <em>magic</em>. Makes money disappear!”</p><p>“He’s two people in one, they gave him a plastic face.” (That one being a character previously played by a different actor.)</p><p>Soap-opera time over, Nat had to get ready for work at the Kwikeemart, working on the checkout. It helped her get through her nursing studies, considering she got no help from her family.  (And had spent half her childhood in a truly creepy sounding children’s home.)</p><p>Steve lounged on the bed with Clint, as Nat got into uniform, utterly uninhibited.  It seemed like a magic trick each time she performed it to Steve, and probably to Clint too — the transformation from blowsy, earthy goddess Natasha, possessed of an excess of vitality and untampered-with natural beauty, into this smart helpful professional woman, beauty muted and flattened by careful conventional make-up, suddenly sober and responsible. She looked almost like someone you’d trust with your kids.</p><p>Steve wheeled his bike along with them, as Nat walked Clint to his animation evening class before going to work. (The only way to get him out of the house, and give Steve some peace, whatever little use he might get out of the class in his altered state.)</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. with your Avenger eyes and your cat-like ways</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Steve doesn't really practise Wicca.  Not much.</p><p>What can a boy do without the odd love-spell, though?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is from Soft Cell's 'Torch'.  lols synchronicity.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And once he’d got home, he indulged in a little witchcraft.  Or, well, a love-spell.  Or a prayer, you could call it.</p><p>Anyhow, he lit a lot of candles, sat down with crossed legs, and began his ritualized monologue, the chanting incantation he'd been at since... how long now?  Just adding little bits to it over time: a home-made recipe.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Now this is a letter to Bucky, who I love without knowing.  It’s no witchcraft neither, not believing in all that crap, but in God and obedience, if it’s meant to happen it will and, if it’s not, I wouldn’t want it, then.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No, really.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Are you waiting for me, Bucky, do you </em>
  <strong>know </strong>
  <em>you’re waiting for me?  Yes you are, yes you are.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jesus, my life is painful.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Can’t complain, though, eh, buddy?  Roll on death.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Just kidding.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where are you tonight?  I send to you a spirit message, I send my spirit journeying out towards you, I touch you </em>
  <strong>now</strong>
  <em>!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Did you feel me?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Buck, listen to me, Buck.  Buck!  </em>
  <strong>Bucky</strong>
  <em>!</em>
</p><p>***</p><p>Bucky woke in the night , sweating and panicked.  He couldn’t imagine why.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. agents of the free</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is from REM's 'Orange Crush'.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And then, of course, the Howling Commandos allowed the unofficial, <em>sub-rosa</em> release of a concert video, shot back in the day, in the very early days.  Not even online: you hadta go <em>old-school,</em> and send off for an actual DVD, released by a little semi-pro production company.  It was run by someone rumored to be an old buddy of Bucky’s, some Phil Coulson geezer.  You had to sign up to their mailing list and pinky-swear not to distribute it yourself or stick it up on an online platform, and… well.</p><p>It was worth anything, whatever hoops he had to jump through.  And then it Goddamn <em>arrived</em>, at Steve’s post office box.  Which he had for, oh, jeez, <em>so many reasons.</em></p><p>And he went and picked it up, and got it home, and oh <em>God</em>.</p><p>He watched the video.  He watched it again.  He watched it again and again.  He WATCHED IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. trade my soul for a wish</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is from Call Me Maybe, Carly Jepsen.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So, he’d got it home.  He’d been looking at it on the bus.  (What, ride his <em>bike</em>?  Crazy.  Precious cargo, man.  <em>Precious cargo.</em>) </p><p>Reading all the stuff on the case, even the things that were like, <em>copyright 2009 Agents of SHIELD recorded and distributed by Chronicom Video, a division of Grant Ward Music Ltd. </em> Even the bar code and the copyright warning.</p><p>He looked at all the pictures and breathed through his mouth like he wanted to suck in Bucky's blurred young face.  He sniffed at it, the smell of clean new plastic making him feel woozy like huffing glue or aerosols, though of course he’d only tried that twice in a misspent youth.   Before he'd found better things to live for.</p><p>He took it out of the box and held it with extreme care, like it contained his heart, his soul.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. you're gonna wish you, never had met me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is from Adèle's 'Rolling In The Deep'.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So, he got into the living room.  Not running, not rushing, but all trembly and deliberate in his movements.  He left his backpack on the couch, and ignored the fact that he needed to pee.  Some things would have to wait.  Some things couldn’t.</p><p>Well, he watched it, on his console because who the heck had a dedicated DVD player any more?  Hell, he watched.  He slid it in and watched it once through.  It was like something inside him was shredding his lungs and heart with a darning needle, as he watched Buck.  It hurt, and it felt like he <em>hated</em> him.  Steve hated him, for making Steve love him so much.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. a message to you, Rudy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is whatever the heck you think it is.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He watched the concert.  He watched it again.  He watched it again and again.  HE WATCHED IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. if I have to sleep on your doorstep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is from 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg' by the Temptations.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of course the next morning was a work morning, just as if the world hadn't stopped for a moment, then slowly and effortfully started up again, creaking and heaving on its axis.  Steve turned up at the nursing home, said a downbeat, monotone <em>good morning</em> to a couple of care assistants, got into his whites and got the heck into the kitchen.  A morning spent chopping vegetables and mixing gallons of sponge pudding to a sweet soul soundtrack, fabulous.  He never played the Commandos' music at work, or in front of anyone else (barring Nat, and by default and necessity Clint.)  That would have been to desecrate it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. a river runnin' soul deep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is by the Box Tops.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Slamming pots and pans around, that was satisfying.  But he couldn't do too much of it, or the nurse in charge came in and <em>had a word.</em>  But the aggravation, the frustration!  What a way to live, thousands of miles separating him from the <em>one</em> man, the one person on this planet he would really be able to communicate with!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. working as a waitress in a cocktail bar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Human League.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>What a way to arrange things, for Christ's sake, he fulminated at God.  A disorganized, wilfully misarranged contingent reality -- that he himself could have fixed so much better -- felt like too much for him to contend with at times.  If <em>he</em> was Mr God -- God's husband -- he would sure as shit put it right and do a better job than this!</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. please mr postman</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title from the song.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And then, when he got home, there was <em>another</em> letter from Pepper in his pigeonhole.  And this one was <em>really fucking weird.</em></p><p>Pity was all very well, though, Steve thought.  But mentally unbalanced people could turn violent and dangerous, on occasion.  And if they did, then they might well turn on the people closest to them.  Which in Pepper’s case might turn out to be <em>Steve</em>.  After all, a person had to be in a pretty sad and friendless state, to reach the point of putting a personal ad in a national music magazine.  And as Pepper’s letters up until now had demonstrated, that description of her was probably accurate.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. no notion of loving people by halves</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Delusion can be a pleasant state of being.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is from Northanger Abbey.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Accurate for himself, too, Steve thought in strict fairness, but without much self-pity, after all.  He had Bucky waiting for him at some point in the future, however unknowing.  It was just a matter of <em>time</em>. </p><p>Little enough reason, then, for feeling sorry for himself.  But even if that hadn’t been the case, he would have felt self-pity to be an inappropriate response to most situations.  You got what you were given, he felt, and then you damn well made the best of it.  What other option was there?  It was never difficult to find an instance of a person worse off than oneself, after all, and that generally shut one’s mouth as far as moaning and complaining were concerned.  His present life was not pleasant, true, but it had some compensations, some things to look forward to.  Any whingeing and quibbling he perceived as amounting to <em>arguing with God,</em> and what purpose could there be in that?  Perching on a windowsill, he lingered over battered copies of Louise L. Hay’s ‘You Can Heal Your Life’, and a Christian Science booklet he’d picked up free from the reading room in town</p><p>He smiled faintly, as he found reassurance and confirmation in the wisdom imparted in those pages.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. why do beautiful songs make you sad?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Jonathan Safran Foer, 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close'.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Making himself a bowl of oatmeal in his little kitchenette, he pondered on whether to answer Pepper’s letter or not.  Hmmm… well, maybe, what the hell.  It was difficult to break off a correspondence of five month’s standing.  Anyway, he always found it intolerably difficult to take the negative option, to abstain from action rather than initiating it, given the opportunity.  Nat said it was the superhero in him coming out — usually tickling him as she said it, holding him down on his little divan bed.  And that was just the natural domme coming out, in her.</p><p>But to Steve, he was just always tortured by the possibilities, the wondering what might have happened, <em>if only…</em></p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. so I should say No to life?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Elaine Dundy, 'The Dud Avocado'.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maybe it had been a bad idea, to answer Pepper’s ad in the personal column when it caught his eye, anyway.  But, hell, there was no way he could have known that at the time.  It was a matter of principle for Steve, to take every opportunity that life offered.  What were you going to do, refuse the gifts life gave you without even knowing what they were beforehand, just because they might work out badly?  Life was an adventure, wasn’t it, even if a frightening one sometimes.  Or maybe a horror story.  Still, you only had to consider the alternative, to decide that you’d better keep on ploughing on somehow.</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. I must get my soul back from you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title is Sylvia Plath.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Carrying the oatmeal on a tray, he settled down in front of his shiny new TV.  (Bought specially.  In honour.  <em>Fuck</em> the artschool fund.)  He didn’t put the DVD on immediately.  He’d been putting it off, since he got into the apartment.  Just putting it off and putting it off.  Feeling fragile right then, he felt like he just couldn’t cope with that much intensity, right at this moment.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So. Steve slowly stirred the oatmeal, waiting for it to cool a bit, watching the steam rising from it and condensing on the spoon he held idly above.  A thought struck him then and he trekked back to the kitchenette, returning with a pot of syrup.  A minute’s experimentation followed, pouring trails of syrup onto the oatmeal, making rather pleasing abstract patterns.  He might have been a child of three, and he was aware of it, aware that an observer might have found his actions irritatingly self-conscious.  Well, there was no observer.  So fuck ’em.  Some of the results were worth recording, possibly useful in a future collage or as inspiration for commercial designs: fabric, wallpaper.  He took a few snaps with his phone.  But after a minute his enthusiasm died away.  This was good Bucky-watchin' time he was a-wastin'.</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of course, alternatively, said observer might have perceived him as <em>self-consciously sensual. </em> Which was really fucking funny, for a committed virgin.</p><p>(Committed until he managed to engineer meeting Bucky, at least.  Then he'd get uncommitted pretty damn quick.  He'd get <em>thoroughly</em> uncommitted.)</p><p>There was more syrup than oatmeal by the time he’d finished. That was okay though, he was a sugar freak.</p><p>He started to eat it, and put the video on, at the same time.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The video deadened his feelings.  After only one evening and most of a night spent in its company, it was excruciatingly familiar — so that he knew each up-coming word and move — and yet had not lost any of its power over him.  Had increased it, in fact.  It was so painful to watch that he found it necessary to slip into a vague, flattened, quasi-autistic state.  It washed over him., and at especially beautiful moments he would stare out of the window, quite unable to tolerate it anymore.  About ten minutes from the end he couldn’t stand it any further and switched off.  Breathing deeply, he stood up, knocking over his oatmeal bowl and spoon.  For a few moments he just stood, too.</p>
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